How do you top one of the most financially successful franchises in history? Well,
sometimes you don't. "Rise of the Beasts" fixed some problems with
the Michael Bay films, but introduced some of its own.
The original "Transformers" movie was about a boy and his car, the boy being Sam Witwicky.
The story of the original three "Transformers" films was largely told through his eyes. Starting
from "Transformers: Age of Extinction," the point-of-view shifted to a more middle-aged
perspective through Texas inventor Cade Yeager. These characters and their supporting players
were never interesting, but worse than that, they were often surrounded by grating comedic
relief players, and the movies were overloaded with broad goofy caricatures mugging for laughs.
"Transformers: Rise of the Beasts" doesn't necessarily excel with its protagonists,
but human leads Noah and Elena are far less annoying than Sam and Cade.
"Rise of the Beasts" does a better job of intertwining Noah into the main robot action,
though Elena is often given the cold shoulder,
and over-the-top examples of comic relief human characters are kept to a bare minimum.
Granted, there's still too much focus in this
"Transformers" movie on disposable human beings instead of robots,
but at least "Rise of the Beasts" has the good sense to make its humans more tolerable.
With "Rise of the Beasts," new visual effects ground has been broken for the franchise,
and not necessarily in a good way. For the first time, the visual effects house
Industrial Light & Magic is not involved with realizing the various CG robots. This company
even stuck around with the Autobots and Decepticons through "Bumblebee," yet they
weren't able to work on a massive movie like "Rise of the Beasts" with its slew of robots
and mechanical animals. An assortment of different visual effects houses was
instead recruited to realize the characters of "Rise of the Beasts," including Weta Digital,
the New Zealand company famous for its work on "Avatar" and "Lord of the Rings."
Unfortunately, the CG used for the array of robots in "Rise of the Beasts" is not Weta's finest. The
biggest issue is that Optimus Prime and company often look strangely rubbery and divorced from
the live-action backdrops. A key climactic moment where the evil Scourge picks Noah up is undercut
by just how fake the whole thing looks. The characters don't seem to be on the same planet,
let alone in the same scene. This is in sharp contrast to the original "Transformers" movies,
which featured terrible robot designs but did fine work incorporating the various aliens
into real-world settings. Despite years of visual effects advancements since the
first movie, "Rise of the Beasts" features shockingly subpar CG on its robotic leads.
Many mainstream films have a reductive view of what on-screen sexuality should be. Too many
mass-market features have used "sexiness" as an excuse to dehumanize people rather
than flesh out characters. Case in point, the original Michael Bay "Transformers" movies,
where the various lead ladies sometimes only existed to be ogled by the camera.
Performers were reduced to body parts for the enjoyment of the male gaze while their
characters were never given interesting personalities or subplots to inhabit.
"Is that your girlfriend?"
"Uh huh."
"Ex."
It was a recurring problem in these movies that encapsulated the unimaginative approach
many mainstream features have toward the concept of sexuality. Thankfully,
"Transformers: Rise of the Beasts" avoids this problem with camerawork and editing that
never reduces the female characters to being just something that people can drool over.
One unexpected virtue of the original Michael Bay "Transformers" movies were their heavy emphasis
on professional voice actors to breathe life into the various robotic characters. Granted,
their lines could have sometimes used a few extra passes in the writers' room.
"This looks like a cool place to kick it.”
"Whadza, how'd he learn to talk like that?"
Still, it was cool that performers like Tom Kenny, Charlie Adler, and Frank Welker were
the default picks for Transformers in the live-action movies. Unfortunately,
that tactic has largely been abandoned for "Transformers: Rise of the Beasts," which
instead opts to cast celebrities for all the robots no matter how big or small the role is.
Not all the famous voices in this installment are inherently bad,
with Michelle Yeoh's work as Airazor being one of the standout elements. However,
it's puzzling that someone with the caliber of Colman Domingo was hired
to voice just a handful of lines delivered by Unicron. Meanwhile, there's nothing in Liza
Koshy's Arcee performance that couldn't have been accomplished by a professional
voice actor like Cree Summer. Worst of all is Pete Davidson's performance as Mirage,
which so overwhelmingly recalls the real-life version of Davidson that it proves distracting.
"Wow, that was corny when I said it out loud."
The Michael Bay "Transformers" movies were marked by the kind of frantic and hyperactive
editing and camerawork choices that have become synonymous with the director. Combined with the
often indecipherable designs of the various robots, many of the big action sequences were
outright incoherent. 2017's "Transformers: The Last Knight" took things to an even lower low by
employing a constantly shifting aspect ratio that would change from one shot to the next,
a byproduct of the movie being partially shot with IMAX cameras. It was a headache-inducing
element that cemented how unengaging the visual landscape of the franchise was.
Thankfully, "Transformers: Rise of the Beasts" opts for crisper framing and more
coherent images that make it easier to digest the various fight scenes. That doesn't mean
there aren't unique visual defects in "Rise of the Beasts," especially when it comes to the
often choppy editing in big set-pieces like the early car chase. However, at least the audience
is always aware of what's happening in a single frame. Those two qualities alone put "Rise of
the Beasts" heads and shoulders above the often incoherent installments like "The Last Knight."
One weird fixture of the Michael Bay "Transformers" movies was how these
lengthy toy commercials also attracted such prestigious performers for key supporting
roles. After John Turturro played Seymour Simmons in the original "Transformers," the
subsequent installments in this series kept finding roles for comically overqualified
actors to inhabit. Frances McDormand showed up in "Transformers: Dark of the Moon" as a
stern government official while Anthony Hopkins is around in "Transformers: The Last Knight."
Stanley Tucci manages to snag two different roles in the franchise. One as a conniving
business mogul in "Age of Extinction" and then as Arthurian wizard Merlin in "The Last Knight."
These actors were never delivering their greatest performances in the "Transformers" movies,
but there was an undeniable level of morbid entertainment to be had in watching such
legendary actors navigate the nonsensical stories of these features. Unfortunately, "Transformers:
Rise of the Beasts" never even tries to emulate this quality of the earlier "Transformers" titles
The absence of Academy Award Winning actors hamming it up
with Optimus Primal doesn't inherently make "Rise of the Beasts" a bad movie.
However, the dissonance of actors like Hopkins sharing the screen with CGI robots
was amusing enough to make it deeply missed when it's suddenly gone from the franchise.
Go back and look at the designs of the robots in the original "Transformers" movies and try
your hardest to discern who is who in any given action sequence. Across the original trilogy of
"Transformers" films, the default color scheme for the Decepticons was gray over a grayer gray.
The Autobots had more varied color palettes, but their over-designed appearances made it
impossible to figure out crucial details about the characters. While "Transformers: Age of
Extinction" and "Transformers: The Last Knight" tried to streamline the robot designs and utilize
more primary colors in their looks, they still blended together in chaotic action sequences.
"Transformers: Rise of the Beasts," thankfully, opts for much more simplified robot designs.
Villainous characters like Scourge are still decked out in subdued colors, but it's much easier
to discern the anatomy of individual robots. The various Maximals are extremely distinctive-looking
compared to one another. It's also a pleasant surprise to see characters like Arcee and Mirage
have such vibrant hues, while even the villainous Nightbird gets a purple color scheme. While not
quite as pleasing-looking as the very classical designs seen in "Bumblebee," the designs of the
Transformers in "Rise of the Beasts" are a welcome departure from the older "Transformers" features.
"Rise of the Beasts" is another period piece. This time around,
the Transformers are shown interacting with Earth and its people in 1994. Initially,
director Steven Caple Jr. seems quite keen to emphasize that "Rise of the Beasts" is
in tune with the world of 1994 thanks to elements like kids wearing "Mighty
Morphin' Power Rangers" T-shirts. However, as the story goes on, the 1994 setting becomes
increasingly inconsequential to the movie. By the time the action shifts to Peru and focuses
on stopping the arrival of Unicron, "Rise of the Beasts" could be set in any time period.
This is a disappointing element of the movie, but it's especially strange since the Michael
Bay "Transformers" movies were very much rooted in the time periods they were made
in. With so many of the "Transformers" movies being rooted in very specific eras,
it's a pity "Rise of the Beasts" quickly loses interest in making use of its 1994 setting.
The original "Transformers" exceeded a 145-minute runtime, and the sequels only got longer from
there. The peak runtime of the saga was reached with the 2014 installment "Transformers:
Age of Extinction," which ran for a staggering 165 minutes.
"Really?"
"Yeah." "No."
"Yeah, a long time."
Thankfully, "Transformers: Rise of the Beasts" is one of the shortest live-action
"Transformers" movies at just 117 minutes. Even though it's much shorter than "Transformers:
The Last Knight," "Rise of the Beasts" certainly could have withstood some further cuts in the
editing room, particularly in a slow second act that is far too heavy on exposition.
Pacing issues notwithstanding, the length of "Rise of the Beasts" is an incredibly
welcome deviation from the runtimes of the Michael Bay "Transformers" movies.
The first "Transformers" movie was released five years before "The Avengers" popularized shared
universes. Because of this, Bay's approach to big-budget movies and "Transformers" has never
really included rampant sequel teases. His "Transformers" movies could feature lingering
plotlines to be dealt with later, but typically, his stories functioned as standalone enterprises.
The ending of "Transformers: Rise of the Beasts," unfortunately,
makes the open-ended conclusion of "Age of Extinction" look extremely subtle by
comparison. This ending suddenly introduces the G.I. Joe mythos into the world of "Transformers"
in the hopes of kickstarting a new Hasbro Cinematic Universe. It's an unwelcome
departure from the willingness of earlier "Transformers" movies to at least end on
a definitive note rather than retroactively turn a preceding movie into a feature-length trailer.
From the very beginning, the Michael Bay "Transformers" movies didn't want to be
seen as just family movies. As a result, the features bolstered their respective screenplays
with plenty of edgy humor meant to tell adults in the audience that this was a movie meant for them.
"I am directly below the enemy scrotum."
Taking a cue from the creative impulses of "Bumblebee," "Rise of the Beasts" eschews
tendencies towards crudeness and shallow ideas of adult humor. While the film doesn't talk down to
audiences or prove unengaging to older viewers, it happily proves appropriate for younger viewers to
watch. It also doesn't derail its plotline with weird attempts to prove how mature its sense of
humor is, which helps make the pacing far more consistent. Ironically, by avoiding edgy humor
aimed at grown-ups, "Rise of the Beasts" comes off as a far more mature and confident production.
The early "Transformers" movies appeared a little self-conscious when it came to
embracing every corner of the source material, but there is a slight shift in "Transformers:
Rise of the Beasts." The very presence of the Maximals suggests that the
franchise has moved closer to acknowledging the ridiculous parts of Transformers lore.
Unfortunately, the more ridiculous parts of "Rise of the Beasts" underscore how the
rest of the movie is still too devoted to realism. Human beings still get the
lion's share of screentime instead of the robots,
major characters like Unicron are still drained of the primary colors they have in the comic books,
and too much time is spent on trying to provide rational explanations for story elements like why
the Maximals are on Earth. The "Transformers" movies still feel self-conscious enough to
overwhelm the audience with exposition justifying its outlandish qualities. And that feels like
an extra strange maneuver when there's a robot gorilla stomping around on-screen.